


this might as well happen

by deliciously_devient



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alien AU, M/M, Sort Of, independence day au, there's an invasion
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-23
Updated: 2019-07-23
Packaged: 2020-07-12 02:28:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19938643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deliciously_devient/pseuds/deliciously_devient
Summary: Jesse just wanted some coffee.





	this might as well happen

Jesse is sitting, lounging really, in front of his favorite coffee shop; it’s his favorite place to get coffee in LA, and he’s been lucky enough to get a seat on the veranda. It’s winter, so it’s barely sixty degrees; perfect weather to sit outside with a hot drink and a book to read on his kindle. Music is blaring through his headphones, so he doesn’t notice exactly when the ship appears overhead, but he looks up when he sees people running down the streets in the opposite direction.

He drops his kindle, mouth falling open as the large, triangular shape fills the sky. It’s black, seamless, hovering silently in the air over the LA skyline, something straight out of a bad scifi movie. He thinks, distantly, that he maybe should have stayed inside. He doesn’t particularly want to know before he dies. 

Silently, he takes his phone out, and begins to record.

“Holy fuck,” he says, as people run by screaming. Others are like him, staring in awe or recording with their phones. He isn’t sure why he’s doing it, other than for some future archeologist to find and piece together the downfall of humanity. “Are you seeing this? Holy shit, I thought we were gonna die of climate change before aliens, what the actual hell.”

In the distance he can see smaller ships breaking off from the larger ones, diving down towards the streets. They’re a couple blocks away, but even from here Jesse can hear the sounds of glass breaking, shooting, more screams. He should get up, he should run; people are dying, and here he is, still sitting and recording it. There’s something seriously wrong with him, but he already knew that. 

He isn’t sure what it is about the voice that cuts through everything else demanding his attention; maybe it’s the tone, the complete exasperation and lack of fear. Maybe it’s the shrillness, the way it sounds like an upset soccer mom arguing with a department store clerk over the price of an item they want but don’t want to pay full price for.

“Are you fucking kidding me? Today?” 

Jesse turns his attention -and his camera- to the source of the voice, catching sight of a person dressed in a blue jean jacket, bell bottoms and a crop top. They look straight out of the seventies, and he’s far enough that he can’t tell if it’s a man or a woman; they’re holding several shopping bags and have big silver hoops visible despite their long black hair, but you can never really tell by clothing these days. Maybe they’re neither, Jesse thinks. It happens.

The person drops their bags, grabbing a scrunchy off their wrist and wrangling their hair into a messy ponytail; they clap their hands together, take a deep breath, and walk forward, into the middle of the street. They take off their shoes, something that makes Jesse frown, and spread their knees apart, holding their hands in front of them in what sort of looks like a fighting stance, but no fighting stance he’s ever seen before.

“Oh fuck off,” the person shouts, and the second time he hears their voice doesn’t clear up their gender any more than the first time. Casually, as though flicking a bug, they flick their fingers to the left, and the sound of an ungodly scream meets Jesse’s ears. He looks, turning his phone with him, and sees the crumpled body of something in the street about thirty feet away from the person. 

“What the fuck, holy fuck, what is that? How did they kill it??” he shrieks, his body finally moving. He jumps over the short veranda fence to get closer to the person. 

“Looks like aliens,” the person says, noticing Jesse. They don’t look bothered, and as he gets closer he can see the well-maintained goatee the person has, along with their bright red lipstick; Jesse is more confused, but puts it to the back of his mind. The person reaches into their pocket, pulling out a long, thin piece of wood; it’s decorated with several stones, tipped with a piece of what looks like copper. The person beckons him closer and he goes, his phone being yanked out of his hand and replaced with the piece of wood.

“Take this, man, and if any of those things get too close to us, point and say ‘bang’, got it?” they ask, and Jesse nods.

“This might as well happen,” he says, a bit numb. The person smiles, wide and bright; their eyes sparkle with light, more than they should.

“That’s the spirit! I’m counting on you man, I gotta take this ship down and it’s gonna take a minute, alright?”

Jesse nods, and holds the wand -because that’s what it has to be, right?- aloft. Jesse McCree is thirty eight years old, and he’s holding a magic wand like a gun, protecting a wizard while said wizard tries to take out an alien ship that is currently invading the city of LA. This is his life now. 

Fifteen years in spec ops is the only thing holding up his spine.

Beside him, the wizard has begun to chant softly, arms up and fingers spread; their eyes are closed and their voice has deepened, sounding almost as if multiple people are speaking. The tips of their fingers have begun to glow, little spiderwebs of light floating through the air, drifting up and towards the ship.

Jesse drags his eyes away from the spectacle, years of experience telling him hostiles are nearby. Sure enough, another of the things the wizard had killed are charging down the street. It’s big, easily seven foot, covered in what appears to be green battle armor; if Jesse didn’t know any better, he would have said it stepped straight off the set of Independence Day, or some other trite alien invasion film. 

He lifts the wand; it doesn’t have the same heft as his gun, but in that moment, it feels just as deadly. It resonates with him, whispers in his ear use me and Jesse was born and bred in the desert, knows you don’t ignore whispers like that if you can help it.

He locks eyes with the alien, and smirks. 

“Bang.”

It drops, like it’s strings were cut; it doesn’t look like the other one the wizard killed; where that one looks like it’d been torn in half with great force, this one simply dropped dead. Jesse feels a bit winded, as if he’d thrown a physical punch, but it fades in a moment. He doesn’t have much time to examine the fallen alien before more run around the corner, and he’s dropping them in much the same manner. He puts himself in front of the vulnerable wizard, a human shield, in case any of the aliens slip past his careful eyes.

He starts to pant after the seventh, feeling as though he’s been running a few miles, exhaustion setting in his bones. The wand must be using his own personal energy to kill the aliens, he thinks, but he pushes it to the back of his mind as even more converge. They must be getting some kind of man down signal, because more and more start to come. Jesse kills each and every one that arrives, a pile of bodies in the street, growing more and more weary.

There’s a stitch in his side, he’s gasping as though he’s been running for hours, and black spots are appearing in the corners of his eyes. There must be fifty bodies piled in front of him, but he has to protect the wizard; he can see the blue tendrils wrapped around the ship now, sharp and bright. He can keep going; he has to. People are dying, and he can do something, so he will.

He hears a roar behind him, and he shudders; the voice is like no other he’s ever heard, sharp and deep and rakes across his spine like lightning. Above him, the blue tendrils pull sharp around the ship, slicing through it like butter. The pieces shatter and begin to fall, but vanish as they hit the huge, blue tendriled circle below them, as if being thrown into a garbage bin. In moments, the ship is entirely gone, as if it had never been.

He jumps as he feels a hand on his shoulder, looking at the wizard. Their eyes are the deepest brown, dark and inviting. He notices for the first time how very pretty the wizard is, with their strong jaw and dark eyes, perfectly done makeup and lush lips.

“You did well,” they rumble, and Jesse smiles. He would speak, but he’s still gasping, exhausted. 

The wizard holds out their hand, and Jesse takes it, gasping as he feels as though he’s been struck by lightning. Energy flows into him, cold and sharp and refreshing. He feels as if he’s just woken up, ready to face the day.

“You are welcome to retreat, now,” the wizard says. “But there are still troops on the ground, and it’s unlikely the mortals’ weapons can pierce their armor.”

“Well shit, sugar, that’s all you had to say,” Jesse says with a grin, and the wizard returns it. They reach over their head and pull off their necklace, a blue arrowhead on a leather string. They put it over Jesse’s head, patting his shoulder again. 

“This should protect you a bit more than your clothing, but do try not to get shot.”

“Darlin’, not getting shot at is something I excel at,” he says with a wink.

“Hnn,” the wizard says, eyes glittering. “See that you do not. You must take me to dinner tonight.”

Jesse laughs, sharp and elated, and nods.

They stick close together; the wizard’s hands glow bright blue as they strike down alien after alien, and they clasp hands whenever Jesse starts to flag; the wand takes more and more from him after each use, but the wizard seems to have unlimited reserve. They’re joined by SWAT and National Guard after a while; high caliber rounds pierce the armor of the invaders, but Jesse and the wizard are the most effective weapon as they kill the aliens instantly with little fanfare.

Jesse notices the more he uses the wand, the less he has to say anything at all; it begins to respond to his thoughts instead of his words, moving debris, flipping cars over, and even bringing down a lightning strike. The wizard exclaims when he does that, laughing ecstatically as they crouch behind a burnt out car. Jesse is, surprisingly, less winded after the lightning strike than the kill spells, and he’s sure he killed far more than one with that.

“You’re a natural!” the wizard exclaims, and their eyes are bright with pride and elation. 

“There’s so many of them,” a nearby SWAT member says. “These are the last, but there’s gotta be a hundred or so behind that barricade.”

Jesse thinks, clutching the wand in his hand and wondering. 

Yes, it whispers in the back of his mind, and he makes his decision.

“Can you get me a sightline on the lot of them?” he asks the wizard, and they eye him critically, before nodding. 

“On three, then, yeah?” 

The wizard nods again, though he is frowning in disapproval. Jesse takes a deep breath, centering his mind and feeling the heat of the sun on his back. The wand sings in his hand, practically purring, and he feels the stillness of the desert settle into his bones.

“One.”

The color around him starts to fade, bleeding out as if someone hit the drain on the colorwheel.

“Two.”

Time starts to slow down; bullets fly in slow motion, dust crystalizing and stopping in the air.

“Three.”

He stands, feels himself being lifted up, up, up. He opens his eyes, seeing each and every alien over the barricade they’ve made. They’re raising their weapons, preparing to shoot him down. They’re not gonna be fast enough.

They never are.

“It’s high noon,” he breathes, and there’s the crack of a gun, though he’s not holding one. The aliens fall, one after another, dead to rights.

He falls too, slowly, staggering as his feet hit the ground. His vision is going black, he’s gasping; his wand falls limply from his limp fingers. 

“Foolish man! I am not a healer!” he hears the wizard scold, and he grins as he closes his eyes. He just needs a second to rest.


End file.
